choleraan acute infection of the small intestine caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae and characterized by extreme diarrhea with rapid and severe depletion of body fluids and salts. Cholera has often risen to epidemic proportions in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, particularly in India and Bangladesh. In the past two centuries, seven pandemics (global epidemics) of cholera have carried the disease to countries around the world.

Cholera is a disease that can incite populations to panic. Its reputation as a fierce and unrelenting killer is a deserved one. It has been responsible for the deaths of millions, for economic losses of immense magnitude, and for the disruption of the very fabric of society in all parts of the world. In spite of the chaos that it continues to generate, cholera is perhaps the best understood of the modern plagues. The organism that causes it has been studied extensively for well over a century; its modes of transmission have been identified; and safe, effective, and inexpensive interventions for both preventing infection and treating clinical illness have been developed.

The cholera bacterium and toxin

Vibrio cholerae is a member of the family Vibrionaceae, which includes three medically important genera of water-dwelling bacteria. It is a short, gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium that appears curved when isolated. There are more than 200 different serogroups of V. cholerae, which are distinguished based on the structure of a protein called the O antigen in the bacterium’s cell wall. Several of these serogroups are pathogenic in humans; however, only two serogroups of V. cholerae—O1 and O139 (sometimes called the Bengal serogroup)—are known to cause cholera. Pathogenic O1 and O139 V. cholerae have the ability to produce cholera toxin, a type of enterotoxin that affects intestinal cells. Pathogenic organisms in the O1 serogroup have caused the majority of cholera outbreaks and are subdivided into two biotypes: classical and El Tor. These two biotypes each contain two serotypes, called Inaba and Ogawa (some classifications recognize a third serotype, Hikojima), which are differentiated based on their biochemical properties, namely their expression of type-specific antigens. Inaba and Ogawa serotypes both express a common cholera antigen known simply as A; however, only Ogawa expresses cholera antigen B and only Inaba expresses cholera antigen C. There also exist multiple strains of Inaba and Ogawa serotypes.

The classical biotype was responsible for most, if not all, of the six great cholera pandemics that swept through the world in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The seventh pandemic, which began in the mid-20th century and continues today, is caused by the El Tor biotype. This biotype possesses two characteristics that are of great epidemiological significance. First, it is a much hardier organism than the classical biotype, and it can survive for long periods of time in aquatic environments. Second, many people infected with the El Tor biotype experience only mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. Seriously ill patients are highly effective transmitters of cholera, but persons with mild or no symptoms are more likely to travel, thereby also playing a crucial role in the spread of the disease. As barriers to commerce and to personal travel disappear, the potential for diseases to be transmitted rapidly from one continent to another increases.

Cholera is an intestinal disease that is the archetype of waterborne illnesses. It spreads by the fecal-oral route: infection spreads through a population when feces containing the bacterium contaminate water that is then ingested by individuals. Transmission of the disease can also occur with food that has been irrigated, washed, or cooked with contaminated water. Foods that have the greatest potential to transmit the disease include shellfish and seafoods, especially if eaten raw; fruits and vegetables grown in soil that has been either fertilized with human excrement (night soil) or irrigated with raw sewage; and foods packed in contaminated ice.

Once the bacterium infects the intestine, it secretes the enterotoxin from its external coating. The enterotoxin binds to a receptor on the cells of the lining of the small intestine. Part of the toxin then enters the intestinal cells. The toxin increases the activity of an enzyme that regulates a cellular pumping mechanism that controls the movement of water and electrolytes between the intestine and the circulatory system. This pump effectively becomes locked in the “on” position, causing the outflow of enormous quantities of fluid—up to one litre (about one quart) per hour—into the intestinal tract. All of the clinical manifestations of cholera can be attributed to the extreme loss of water and salts.

Symptoms and treatment

Cholera is marked by the sudden onset of profuse, watery diarrhea, typically after an incubation period of 12 to 28 hours. The fluid stools, commonly referred to as “rice water” stools, often contain flecks of mucus. The diarrhea is frequently accompanied by vomiting, and the patient rapidly becomes dehydrated. The patient is very thirsty and has a dry tongue. The blood pressure falls, the pulse becomes faint, and muscular cramps may become severe. The patient’s eyes become hollow and sunken, and the skin becomes wrinkled, giving the hands the appearance of “washerwoman’s hands.” Children may also experience fever, lethargy, and seizures as a result of the extreme dehydration. The disease ordinarily runs its course in two to seven days.

The rapid loss of fluid from the bowel can, if untreated, lead to death—sometimes within hours—in more than 50 percent of those stricken. However, with proper modern treatment, mortality can essentially be prevented, with rates kept to less than 1 percent of those requiring therapy. This treatment consists largely of replacing lost fluid and salts with the oral or intravenous administration of an alkaline solution of sodium chloride. For oral rehydration the solution is made by using oral rehydration salts (ORS)—a measured mixture of glucose, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, and trisodium citrate. The mixture can be prepackaged and administered by nonmedical personnel, allowing cholera to be treated even under the most adverse conditions. ORS can generally be used to treat all but the most severely dehydrated patients, who require intravenous rehydration.

The administration of antibiotics such as tetracycline during the first day of treatment usually shortens the period of diarrhea and decreases the amount of fluid replacement required. It is also important for patients to resume eating as soon as they are able in order to avoid malnutrition or to prevent existing malnutrition from becoming worse.

Prevention

A safe and clean supply of water is the key to cholera prevention. Adequate chlorination of public water supplies and, in some cases, the distribution of chlorine tablets to households with instructions for their proper use are often effective measures. If chemical disinfection is not possible, people can be instructed to boil water before drinking it, but this may be difficult to accomplish, especially in poor countries where fuel may be expensive or unavailable. Sometimes even simpler methods can be effective. For example, in Kolkata, where it is common for people to store water at home, cholera transmission was substantially reduced by replacing open containers, which allowed water to become easily contaminated, with narrow-necked jugs.

Another important intervention is the hygienic disposal of human waste. In areas lacking modern sewerage systems, the use of latrines can substantially lower the risk of infection. Ensuring the safety of food is yet another important control measure. During an epidemic of cholera, it is important that all food—including leftovers—be thoroughly cooked (to a core temperature of 70 °C [158 °F]) and that it be eaten before it cools. It is also important that stored food be covered to avoid contamination and that people always wash their hands after defecation and prior to food preparation. Foods sold by street vendors have been repeatedly implicated as sources of infection and should therefore be avoided by travelers to areas where cholera is endemic.

Vaccines have been developed against cholera, but they have not been considered effective for the prevention of cholera in large populations or during epidemics. Their usefulness is generally restricted to providing short-term protection for travelers visiting areas where cholera is endemic. Public health officials in some countries do not recommend cholera vaccination for any reason. Restrictions on travel and on food imports are among the measures that have at times been perceived as important for the prevention of cholera but have been shown to have relatively little benefit.

Cholera through history

The recorded history of cholera is relatively short and remarkable. Although the ancient Greek physicians Hippocrates (5th–4th century BCE) and Galen (2nd–3rd century CE) referred to an illness that may well have been cholera, and there are numerous hints that a cholera-like malady has been well known in the fertile delta plains of the Ganges River since antiquity, most of what is known about the disease comes from the modern era. Gaspar Correa, a Portuguese historian and the author of Legendary India, gave one of the first detailed accounts of the clinical aspects of an epidemic of “moryxy” in India in 18431543: “The very worst of poison seemed there to take effect, as proved by vomiting, with drought of water accompanying it, as if the stomach were parched up, and cramps that fixed in the sinews of the joints.”

The first six pandemics

Cholera became a disease of global importance in 1817. In that year a particularly lethal outbreak occurred in Jessore, India, midway between Calcutta (Kolkata) and Dhaka (now in Bangladesh), and then spread throughout most of India, Burma (Myanmar), and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). By 1820 epidemics had been reported in Siam (Thailand), in Indonesia (where more than 100,000 people succumbed on the island of Java alone), and as far away as the Philippines. At Basra, Iraq, as many as 18,000 people died during a three-week period in 1821. The pandemic spread through Turkey and reached the threshold of Europe. The disease also spread along trade routes from Arabia to the eastern African and Mediterranean coasts. Over the next few years, cholera disappeared from most of the world except for its “home base” around the Bay of Bengal.

The second cholera pandemic, which was the first to reach into Europe and the Americas, began in 1829. The disease arrived in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1830, continuing into Finland and Poland. Carried by tradesmen along shipping routes, it rapidly spread to the port of Hamburg in northern Germany and made its first appearance in England, in Sunderland, in 1831. In 1832 it arrived in the Western Hemisphere; in June more than 1,000 deaths were documented in Quebec. From Canada the disease moved quickly to the United States, disrupting life in most of the large cities along the eastern seaboard and striking hardest in New Orleans, Louisiana, where 5,000 residents died. In 1833 the pandemic reached Mexico and Cuba.

The third pandemic is generally considered to have been the most deadly. It is thought to have erupted in 1852 in India; from there it spread rapidly through Persia (Iran) to Europe, the United States, and then the rest of the world. Africa was severely affected, with the disease spreading from its eastern coast into Ethiopia and Uganda. Perhaps the worst single year of cholera was 1854; 23,000 died in Great Britain alone.

The fourth and fifth cholera pandemics (beginning in 1863 and 1881, respectively) are generally considered to have been less severe than the previous ones. However, in some areas extraordinarily lethal outbreaks were documented: more than 5,000 inhabitants of Naples died in 1884, 60,000 in the provinces of Valencia and Murcia in Spain in 1885, and perhaps as many as 200,000 in Russia in 1893–94. In Hamburg, repeatedly one of the cities in Europe most severely affected by cholera, almost 1.5 percent of the population perished during the cholera outbreak of 1892. The last quarter of the 19th century saw widespread infection in China and particularly in Japan, where more than 150,000 cases and 90,000 deaths were recorded between 1877 and 1879. The disease spread throughout South America in the early 1890s.

The sixth pandemic lasted from 1899 to 1923 and was especially lethal in India, in Arabia, and along the North African coast. More than 34,000 people perished in Egypt in a three-month period, and some 4,000 Muslim pilgrims were estimated to have died in Mecca in 1902. (Mecca has been called a “relay station” for cholera in its progress from East to West; 27 epidemics were recorded during pilgrimages from the 19th century to 1930, and more than 20,000 pilgrims died of cholera during the 1907–08 hajj.) Russia was also struck severely by the sixth pandemic, with more than 500,000 people dying of cholera during the first quarter of the 20th century. The pandemic failed to reach the Americas and caused only small outbreaks in some ports of western Europe. Even so, extensive areas of Italy, Greece, Turkey, and the Balkans were severely affected. After 1923 cholera receded from most of the world, though endemic cases continued in the Indian subcontinent.

The rise of the seventh pandemic

Cholera did not spread widely again until 1961, the beginning of the seventh pandemic. Unlike earlier pandemics, which began in the general area of the delta region of the Ganges River, this pandemic began on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. The seventh pandemic spread throughout Asia during the 1960s. During the next decade it spread westward to the Middle East and reached Africa, where cholera had not appeared for 70 years. The African continent is believed to have been struck harder at this time than ever before and in 1990 was the origin of more than 90 percent of all cholera cases reported to the World Health Organization (WHO). In 1991, 19 African nations reported nearly 140,000 cases in total. A particularly large outbreak occurred in 1994 among the many hundreds of thousands who fled widespread killing in Rwanda and occupied refugee camps near the city of Goma, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo). Tens of thousands perished from cholera during the first four weeks following their flight.

In 1991 cholera appeared unexpectedly and without explanation in Peru, on the western coast of South America, where it had been absent for 100 years. Cholera caused 3,000 deaths in Peru the first year, and it soon infected Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and Chile and leaped northward to Central America and Mexico. By 2005 cholera had been reported in nearly 120 countries. Although the seventh pandemic continued in many parts of the world, the more-industrialized countries of the world were largely spared. As the disparity between industrialized and less-developed countries grew, cholera, which previously had been a global disease, seemed to have become yet another burden to be borne by impoverished nations of the Third World. Moreover, experts predicted that this time cholera would not go away but would become endemic to many parts of the world, much as it has been for centuries to the Ganges delta.

The seventh pandemic in the 21st century

While the incidence of cholera in developed countries decreased significantly in the late 1990s, the disease remained prevalent in Africa. In 1995, out of some 209,000 total cholera cases worldwide, roughly 72,000 cases occurred in Africa and 86,000 in South and North America. However, in 1998, out of about 293,000 total cases worldwide, there were roughly 212,000 cases in Africa but only 57,000 in the Americas. In the early 2000s many countries within Africa, such as Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania, experienced outbreaks that often involved more than 20,000 cases and several hundred deaths. During that time the disparity in the incidence of cholera in Africa relative to other parts of the world continued to grow. The persistence of the disease was attributed to poor water quality, poor hygiene, and poor sanitation—factors that stemmed from the lack of organized sanitation programs—and the lack of access to health care in many regions of Africa.

Zimbabwe cholera outbreak of 2008–09

Zimbabwe, located in southern Africa, experienced a severe epidemic of cholera from 2008 to 2009. The outbreak, which was fueled by the fragmented infrastructure of Zimbabwe’s health care system and by the unavailability of food and of clean drinking water, started in August 2008 in a district located south of the country’s capital city, Harare. Between August and December 2008 the disease spread quickly, reaching Harare and several surrounding districts and spreading throughout the east, west, and central Mashonaland provinces, the Midlands province, and the Manicaland province. By late April 2009 the epidemic affected more than 95 percent of the country’s districts, and some 96,700 cases and 4,200 deaths had been reported. It was suspected that a small epidemic that occurred in districts near Harare from January to April 2008 may have given rise to the epidemic that emerged in August, since inadequate health care services could have enabled undetected transmission of the bacteria to persist.

Economic collapse within Zimbabwe compounded the cholera epidemic of 2008–09. Because of economic inflation, several of the country’s hospitals were forced to close in late November 2008, as they could not afford to buy medicine to refill their depleted stocks. By early December stocks of water-purification chemicals had run out, causing many people to rely on unclean water. While the sanitary conditions declined in many affected areas, conditions were especially poor in Harare, where the failure of sewage systems led to the outflow of raw sewage into streets and rivers and the collapse of sanitary regulation led to the accumulation of refuse in public places. On December 4, 2008, the Zimbabwean government declared a national state of emergency and actively sought international aid. Organizations such as the WHO and the International Committee of the Red Cross worked to improve disease surveillance, to provide medical supplies, and to enlist doctors and sanitary engineers. These organizations also provided shipments of much-needed water and water-purification chemicals.

By late December 2008, despite the efforts of relief organizations, cholera had spread to all 10 of Zimbabwe’s provinces. The risk of infection and death from cholera was exacerbated by severe food shortages and the closure of numerous hospitals and clinics. These factors contributed to a dramatic rise in the cholera fatality rate in Zimbabwe, which reached 5.7 percent—surpassing considerably the 1 percent fatality rate typically associated with large-scale cholera epidemics. Fatality rates inflated to 50 percent in rural areas of Zimbabwe that were heavily affected by the lack of medical services. In March 2009, 30 different strains of cholera were isolated from water samples collected from regions across the country.

In addition to the spread of cholera within Zimbabwe, the disease reached nearby countries, including Zambia, South Africa, Botswana, and Mozambique. By late January 2009 some 6,000 cases of cholera had been reported in South Africa, nearly half of which occurred in Limpopo province, near the Zimbabwe border.

Haiti cholera outbreak of 2010–11

In October 2010, in the months following a devastating earthquake in Haiti, the El Tor biotype emerged in Haiti’s Artibonite province, where fecal matter had contaminated the Artibonite River, which was a major source of drinking water. By January 2011 the disease had spread across all Haiti’s provinces and had reached the Dominican Republic. By mid-October that year, health officials had recorded a total of 473,649 cases and 6,631 deaths. In a bulletin published about the same time by WHO and the Pan American Health Organization, health officials estimated that 500,000 people would be affected by the end of the year.

Prior to the 2010–11 outbreak, cholera had not been detected in Haiti for more than a century. Identification of the strain as El Tor suggested that the bacterium was likely introduced to the region from a distant location via human activity.

Scientific investigation of the seventh pandemic

Scientists investigating the seventh pandemic have traced the origin of modern V. cholerae isolates to the Bay of Bengal and a common El Tor ancestor whose existence was dated to 1827–1936. Since then, three separate, though at times overlapping, intercontinental waves of cholera have emerged from the Bay of Bengal, the first of which began in 1961. During the three waves there have been several instances of long-range transmission, in which a strain has reached a location distant from that of its most recent ancestor. This suggests that outbreaks such as the one in Haiti in 2010–11, where cholera had long been absent, are not rare. In addition, the latter two waves of the seventh pandemic were found to have involved strains of V. cholerae with acquired antibiotic resistance. The researchers arrived at their findings after sequencing the genomes of V. cholerae isolates from different regions of the world.

Some health officials who monitor cholera epidemics believed that V. cholerae O139 might eventually produce an eighth pandemic. However, the ability of the O139 serogroup to spread in areas affected by the O1 serogroup in the ongoing seventh pandemic appeared limited, and O139 remained confined to India and Bangladesh.

Study of the disease

Credit for the discovery of the cholera bacterium is usually accorded to Robert Koch, the German bacteriologist who first enunciated the principles of modern germ theory. In June 1883, during the fifth pandemic, Koch and a team of scientists traveled first to Egypt and then to Calcutta to study outbreaks of cholera. By employing a technique he invented of inoculating sterilized gelatin-coated glass plates with fecal material from patients, he was able to grow and describe the bacterium. He was then able to show that its presence in a person’s intestine led to the development of cholera in that person. While in Calcutta Koch also made valuable observations on the role played by water in the transmission of the bacterium.

Koch’s findings, however, were not original. Rather, they were rediscoveries of work that had been previously done by others. The Italian microbiologist Filippo Pacini had already seen the bacterium and named it “cholerigenic vibrios” in 1854 (a fact of which Koch is assumed not to have been aware). The principal mode of cholera transmission, contaminated water, had also been described previously—by the British anesthesiologist John Snow in 1849. Snow’s work, however, was not totally accepted at the time, since other theories of disease causation were prevalent, most notably that of “miasmatism,” which claimed that cholera was contracted by breathing air contaminated by disease-containing “clouds.”

Biotype El Tor was first described by the German physician E. Gotschlich in 1905, during the sixth pandemic, at a quarantine station at El Tor in the Sinai Desert. The station had been established to study cholera in victims returning from pilgrimages to Mecca. V. cholerae O139 was identified in 1992 during a cholera outbreak on the eastern coast of India.

Development of treatments

Little is known about the treatment of cholera prior to its arrival in Europe. One of the early recorded advances was made by the chemist R. Hermann, a German working at the Institute of Artificial Mineral Waters in Moscow during the 1831 outbreak. Hermann believed that water should be injected into the victims’ veins to replace lost fluids. William Brooke O’Shaughnessy, a young British physician, reported in The Lancet (1831) that, on the basis of his studies, he “would not hesitate to inject some ounces of warm water into the veins. I would also, without apprehension, dissolve in that water the mild innocuous salts which nature herself is accustomed to combine with the human blood, and which in Cholera are deficient.” His ideas were put into practice by a Scotsman, Thomas Latta, as early as 1832, with surprisingly good results, but few physicians followed Latta’s example. Conventional treatment consisted of enemas, castor oil, calomel (mercurous chloride; a purgative), gastric washing, venesection (bloodletting), opium, brandy, and plugging of the anus to prevent fluid from escaping. Mortality due to cholera remained high throughout the 19th century.

The search for an adequate treatment was renewed at the beginning of the 20th century. Among the leading investigators were Sir Leonard Rogers, an Englishman at Calcutta Medical College, and Andrew Sellards, an American in Manila. Rogers developed a replacement fluid that contained a much higher salt content than had previously been used and that resulted in a halving of cholera deaths—from a 60 percent mortality rate down to 30 percent. Sellards suggested that sodium bicarbonate be added to intravenous solutions in addition to sodium chloride, an idea that Rogers then adopted and that resulted in further reductions in mortality—to 20 percent.

The next round of major advances in cholera treatment did not occur until 1958, when Robert A. Phillips, a U.S. Navy physician, identified a solution that proved to be even more effective. Further refinements of Phillips’s solution and the methods of administering treatment occurred in Bangkok (Thailand), Taiwan, Manila, and Dhaka. By the mid-1960s, mortality rates in those areas were under 1 percent.

The next step in the conquest of cholera was to develop a rehydration fluid that could be administered orally. This method would obviate the need for distilled water, needles, and intravenous tubing and theoretically would make simple and effective treatment available to all cholera victims. Oral rehydration therapy was brought to reality by a medical breakthrough sometimes hailed as one of the most important of the 20th century—the discovery that the small intestine’s absorption of sodium, the principal ion lost during an acute cholera attack, is linked to the absorption of glucose. It became clear that a solution of sodium, glucose, and water in the intestine would overcome the losses caused by the cholera enterotoxin and would maintain the hydration of the patient.

Early application of oral rehydration solutions was implemented by Ruth R. Darrow in the United States for dehydrated infants and by N.H. Chatterjee in Calcutta for successfully treating patients with mild cholera. Clinical studies carried out simultaneously by physicians Norbert Hirschhorn in Dhaka and Nathaniel F. Pierce in Calcutta helped define the optimal composition of an oral solution. In 1968 researchers David A. Nalin and Richard A. Cash, working in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), developed an oral glucose-electrolyte solution that was suitable for cholera patients of all ages with all severities of illness. In mild cases the solution was effective as the sole treatment. Finally, in a controlled trial in a refugee camp in West Bengal, India, during the Bangladeshi struggle for independence in 1971, physician Dilip Mahalanabis and his colleagues showed that case-fatality rates in cholera patients treated with oral rehydration salts (ORS) could be kept substantially lower than in patients who were treated with what was, at the time, conventional therapy. Today ORS is the mainstay of treatment not only for cholera but for all diarrheal illnesses.